


Maps

by onpaperfirst



Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 23:24:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14175615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onpaperfirst/pseuds/onpaperfirst
Summary: s7, hollywood a.d., los angeles plays itselfEven Mulder, with his unerring sense for choosing the wrong, most circuitous route, would not drive into the Pacific. She was 95% sure.(originally posted at my livejournal 5/3/08)





	Maps

Somewhere inside, there was a party going on, people getting drunk and congratulating each other and themselves, tromping over a re-dressed set, knocking over phony headstones and sloshing cleverly named cocktails. Zombie Mary, Pontiff-tini, G-Man on the Rocks, Laza-rum and Coke.

Outside, the bored valet had drawn them a hasty map on the back of an envelope, one eye on the baseball game playing on his miniature TV.

Scully’s cold little fingers unraveled Mulder’s bow tie and unbuttoned a button. The kid looked up through his eyelashes with interest. As she loped over to the other side of the car, twirling the tie around her finger, he watched Mulder watching her and said, “You should take her to the beach, man. Girls love the beach. It’s romantic as shit.”

He’d labeled the scribbled blue mass on the left of the sketch: OCEAN. An arrow pointing to it. Mulder grabbed the envelope from him and got in the car.

“Yeahhhh,” the kid grinned, rubbing his shaved head. He leaned back over the valet stand as the Dodgers finished up the top of the eighth, turning a double play. 

 

She didn’t ask why they were driving west, not east, against his original plan, since they could only go so far in a westward direction. Even Mulder, with his unerring sense for choosing the wrong, most circuitous route, would not drive into the Pacific. She was 95% sure.

The 10 was nearly empty and they drove its ivy-bordered lanes until it dead-ended and curved into the PCH. They drove past the pier where a man’s head had fallen off of his shoulders. Porch lights winked along the coast, where rich people lived between salt water and speeding cars.

Past Santa Monica, everything went rustic, or at least Los Angeles’ idea of such. Clapboard seafood restaurants on one side, surf shops on the other. Scrubby brush on the cliffs, waiting for mudslides or fire. They stopped at a bait shop, open late, on a corner of the PCH and a tiny canyon road and bought a six pack of Corona. Mulder marveled at Scully’s ability to momentarily tamp down her effervescence for the man behind the counter. The guy wore a backward baseball cap, his jerkied skin evidence of too many days in the unfiltered southern California sun.

Scully pulled the cervezas off the counter and the man slid Mulder the receipt and the FBI’s plastic, winking at him. Why was everyone acting like he was with his prom date? He was almost 40 years old. Did he really look that out of his depth with Scully? Not that he didn’t feel exceedingly lucky, but he thought after more than seven years, he might’ve outgrown that look. The people of Los Angeles were trying his patience.

They drove and drove, the Coronas sweating in the backseat, Richard Blade and his drowsy British accent low on the radio. Suedehead segued into Dead Man’s Party. Don’t run away, it’s only me.

 

They pulled over and parked on the sandy edge of the road, sprinting across the four lanes, hand in hand. The air was thick and briny, more taste than smell. It was washed up seaweed, the end of the continent.

They encamped on the beach, breaking state laws with their open glass containers. Mulder leveled his eyes to the smudged ink horizon and pretended not to be moving his hand up her leg.

“I’m not having sex with you on the beach.” 

“Who said anything about that?”

“Yeah, right.”

He moved his hand higher. She let him.

“We have a hotel room. Two, actually. With fluffy beds and no sand.” She leaned her head back and took a drink, propped up with one palm. She showed no sign of moving his hand. He rubbed circles against her leg.

“Too bad we don’t have any limes,” she non sequitured. 

“The bathtubs looked pretty big,” he ventured.

“Really,” was all she said.

She wedged the bottle into an impromptu cup holder of sand and ran toward the water. She stopped at the edge and let it lap at her toes. She looked back at Mulder, rather than out at the black water.

He met her there and wrapped his arms around her, lifting her a couple of inches off the ground so they were nose to nose for a moment.

“Your nose is cold,” she said. Her breath smelled hoppy, with peppermint underneath from an earlier stick of gum. She covered his nose with her palm, warming it up. He nipped at the fleshy heel of her hand and she giggled, low and quiet. Their shoes, black and serious, jumbled with each other on the slope of a dune.

 

They had a strict rule, although making love at the edge of the Pacific wouldn’t have broken it. It was smart, he guessed, but disappointing, because what were cheap motel rooms for, if not that? She would kiss him chastely goodnight after hours of working and he would inevitably pull her flat against him to make sure she understood. Goodnight. She would make an mmmm sound, something that sounded like an invitation, but which he was expected to interpret as “see you in the morning, Agent Mulder.” Once, she made the sound, then murmured against his mouth, Leave room for the Holy Spirit, like the nuns at a school dance. This was not helpful. He wanted to know how this wasn’t consorting.

 

They took a left off the PCH onto Sunset, drove through the dark, leafy streets of the Palisades, of Brentwood. Mulder made OJ jokes and immediately apologized, saying it was entirely out of his control. They crossed the 405, a caterpillar of head and brake lights. Her feet were still marble cold; she could feel a high water line on her ankle where the blood stopped flowing.

He had told the kid at the valet stand to make it scenic, so after the Strip, the map on the envelope cut them down to Wilshire. “You wanna see where Biggie Smalls died,” the kid had explained. Wilshire smelled like sizzling hamburgers and soy sauce in clear packets and bus exhaust. The palm trees all tilted in unison.

It was a city in its adolescence, shifting with a wide-hipped swagger, but with something delicate and strange underneath, if you cared to look. People were living their lives there, honest lives, marking the land and the sky, without considering themselves inhabitants of a stagy archetype.

They passed a diner whose only purpose was to be in commercials. Lit up and empty, a paper in the window said: AVAILABLE FOR FILMING. Woolly mammoths gave out silent screams, watching one of their own wade into the tar pits. Window down, they caught a whiff of sticky summertime asphalt.

 

The Observatory, the big X on their map, was Mediterranean white and the oxidized green of a wet penny. Fuzzy lights ringed the dome. They drove north on Vermont, straight toward it, the mothership calling them home.

As they moved up the hill at a near-constant angle, it was silent and shadowy. It felt like they had something in the trunk waiting to be dumped in the secret-keeping night. There were a few other cars in the parking lot, serious amateur astronomers clustering near the telescope, waiting to get in like a ride at an amusement park.

They jostled in front of Copernicus, Newton, Galileo.

“I can’t believe I forgot my switchblade,” he said, stabbing her in the side with a finger instead.

“What kind of rebel are you?”

 

They leaned on the railing, looking down across the wide basin, dirty and fluorescent. The smog mixed soupily with the lights in a Halloween orange watercolor glaze.

“Is it everything you thought it would be?”

“More.”

They were never exactly talking about what it was they were talking about.

 

“Show me how to tie a bow tie.” She produced it from her coat pocket like a magician’s scarf.

“You planning on meeting someone who doesn’t know how to tie a bow tie?”

His dad had taught him how to tie a bow tie. Mulder had stood next to him in front of the mirror, feeling a little like a ten-year-old James Bond. He practiced it until his fingers felt stubby and numb, the same way he threw tennis balls against the garage to perfect his curveball.

Scully raised her eyebrows at him innocently. “What if you lose a hand and you have to get a hook? I’ll have to tie it then.”

“Never trust a man who can’t tie his own tie.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.”

“Good.”

She faced him. He grabbed the bow tie and draped it around her neck, turned her so she was facing the city, and stepped behind her.

She’d known him for nearly eight years. She was delighted that he had the know-how to make her flush, make her stomach drop. At work, though, nothing had changed, which delighted her, too. Only they smiled at each other more, which was nice.

His breath was hot in her ear and she threw a silent thank you into the hills for the fact that another person could make her feel like that. Mulder tied the tie, whispering instructions. Left over right, pull it up, cross it over, make sure the knot’s centered. His thumbs brushed her throat, his fingers tapped her collarbone.

“There.”

She slowly turned around to face him, his arms bracketing her against the railing. The tie butterflied against her white throat.

“Let’s go,” she whispered.

 

Down the hill, in the grid of streets below Griffith Park, they found a divey, wood paneled bar in a strip mall. It had vinyl booths and they ordered cheap beer and salty fries. They were making terrible use of the Bureau’s credit rating. They sat too close, falling all over each other.

Mulder had barely had three drinks, beers at that, but she insisted on giving him a breathalyzer test anyway, her tongue edging (for science, for safety’s sake) past his lips as they leaned up against the car in the parking lot.

“You’re drunk,” he said.

“No, I’m not.” She looked at him seriously.

“Mmmhmm.” They had imbibed the same amount of alcohol, but he also had a good sixty, seventy pounds on her.

“Don’t puke in the car. We’ll never get the deposit back.”

“Even if I were drunk, which I am not, Fox William Mulder”--she poked him in the chest--“I wouldn’t be that kind of drunk.”

“Oh, and what kind of drunk would you be?”

She tugged on his shirttail as an answer and got into the car.

 

In the mirrored elevator, he licked her neck, sand gritting on his tongue. There was probably a security camera watching them, but they were in another state and they were a little tipsy and they weren’t on a case and the federal government, which kind of owed them, anyway, was paying for their huge hotel rooms. She watched a Busby Berkeley line of dark Mulder heads moving against her and she reached back to grip the brass railing.

“We’re in an elevator,” she said.

The buttons lit up as the elevator rose.

He worked his hand up under her dress, his thumb idly pressing at the edge of her underwear. It was black, he was sure of it, divining it by feeling. Then, it usually was. She gripped the bar more tightly.

“It’s our floor.”

 

The first time properly, on the bed, the soft, white bed with its superfluous pillows, but they didn’t even bother to pull the covers down, it was impressive that they had managed to shed all of their clothing. She was on top of him and his thumbs rubbed her hipbones like talismans while her hand worried the crease of his chest, up and down, up and down in time. He scooted up suddenly so he was leaning against the pillows and the quiet headboard, which broke her concentration and made her gasp as they folded sharply against each other.

In the bathtub, which was much better suited to two people than one, they mostly did what Mulder charmingly called “messing around.” Mostly. They paused for Scully to turn the knob and add more hot water. Mulder got out of the tub without drying off and pressed damp footprints into the thick piled carpet. He bought an obscenely overpriced bag of Sour Patch kids and a $7 bottle of water from the minibar, just because he could. The bag was hard to open and several candies ended up floating slimily in the bath like bait. When they felt like getting serious, no more messing around, Mulder had tufts of shampoo in his hair and their kisses tasted vaguely of hotel soap and they sloshed water onto the tiled floor.

She sat next to the sink, wrapped in a towel, and he dried her hair with the dryer attached to the wall. He used his fingers as a comb and when he was finished, her hair was fluffy and tangled. She patted her head and told him to keep his day job.

And then, well, they were meaning to go to sleep, or at least Scully was, but under the covers, Mulder’s hand slipped lower. She said “Mulder” and it was supposed to sound like a warning, but it didn’t. She grabbed a fist of his hair and kissed him wetly as he slipped a second finger into her, grinding his palm down against her. Her legs fell open.

He was such a show-off.

The movie had left him with something to prove, she knew, although she thought she’d been fairly clear about how fond she was of him. Lately, especially, because it turned out she was sometimes (accidentally) kind of loud. She figured his thin-walled neighbors had a nickname for them, something like “The Last Name Sex People.”

His foot was curled around the top of her foot, and it seemed to be connected like a marionette to his hand, because the sole was rubbing in a maddeningly identical rhythm. His foot, his stupid foot, was making her crazier than his fingers.

She was prone to burying her face in his neck, in a pillow, because it was too astounding to contemplate with eyes open.

It wasn’t embarrassing, exactly, even at the beginning. They’d already seen each other naked and shot and drugged into stupors and singing and paranoia. He’d once held her hair back while she threw up on the side of a highway outside Lincoln, Nebraska. The burritos they’d had for lunch hadn’t affected Mulder’s cast iron stomach, but in between heaves, she seemed to remember a large B rating in the restaurant window. When she finished, she spat on the ground until her tongue went dry, trying to get it all out of her mouth. He wiped her face with a napkin from the glove box and gave her the half-melted ice cubes at the bottom of his cup.

But if they weren’t embarrassed, they were often momentarily shocked to find themselves naked in bed together. A disconnect, like seeing your teacher at the grocery store when you’re eight.

He pulled his head back from her kiss and they looked at each other squarely, nothing passing between them but puffs of breath. Their bodies were moving but their eyes were not. She licked the corner of her mouth and hissed and he squinted, in pain, in lust, in great and terrible love. His eyes were dark and his hand slowed down. 

“Please,” she said, her hand on his wrist, tugging. “Mulder.”

He nodded. His fingers were slick and air-cold as they found her hip. She pulled him onto her, wrapped her legs around him and dug her heels into the valley of his back. Forehead to forehead, they watched each other.

They bundled up in the marshmallow fluff of the covers and slept.

 

At stale-aired LAX, they were business travelers again, bunching in surly lines to have wands waved over them, to buy bitter cups of coffee and crumbly muffins. The plane horseshoed out over the Pacific, the sun at its back. If you closed the window shade at the right time, the u-turn over the water seemed less a mundane function of flight patterns and more a small kindness, a trick to make you forget where you were going. Because at the end of the continent, there is nowhere to go but back. Across the aisle, Skinner nursed a sweaty glass of tomato juice and a champagne hangover.

Scully wasn’t usually whimsical. Mulder always had to tug her hand, cajole her into a dreaminess that never stuck.

But now, she set a tiny, perfect seashell the size and shape of a snail on his tray. A few grains of sand bounced off. She’d kept it in her coat pocket all night.

“What’s this?”

“Listen.”

He tipped his ear up, hearing only the white noise roar of the engine. She shook her head sadly at his lack of imagination and picked the shell up between her thumb and forefinger. Held it delicately to his ear. Ears are shells, bisected.

“I stole the ocean for you.”


End file.
